The Emma Gees

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The Emma Gees, by Herbert Wes McBride

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Title: The Emma Gees
Author: Herbert Wes McBride

Release Date: February 24, 2007 [eBook #20655]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE EMMA GEES
by
HERBERT W. McBRIDE Captain, U. S. A. Late Twenty-first Canadian Battalion
Illustrated with Photographs and Trench Maps

[Illustration: Bouchard]
Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers Copyright 1918 The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Press of Braunworth & Co. Book Manufacturers Brooklyn, N. Y.

TO THE MEMORY OF
WILLIAM EMMANUEL BOUCHARD
Lance-Corporal Machine Gun Section Twenty-first Canadian Infantry Battalion
KILLED IN ACTION, AT COURCELLETTE SEPTEMBER 15TH 1916

In Flanders' fields the crosses stand-- Strange harvest for a fertile land! Where once the wheat and barley grew, With scarlet poppies running through. This year the poppies bloom to greet Not oats nor barley nor white wheat, But only crosses, row by row, Where stalwart reapers used to go. Harvest in Flanders--Louise Driscoll

INTRODUCTION
When the final history of this war is written, it is doubtful if any other name will so appeal to the Canadian as Ypres and the Ypres Salient; every foot of which is hallowed ground to French, Belgians, British and Colonials alike; not a yard of which has not been consecrated to the cause of human liberty and baptized in the blood of democracy.
Here the tattered remnants of that glorious "contemptible little army," in October, 1914, checked the first great onrush of the vandal hordes and saved the channel ports, the loss of which would have been far more serious than the capture of Paris and might, conceivably, have proved the decisive factor in bringing about a Prussian victory in the war.
Here the first Canadian troops to fight on the soil of Europe, the Princess Pat's, received their trial by fire and came through it with untarnished name, and here, also, the First Canadian Contingent withstood the terrible ordeal of poison gas in April, 1915, and, outnumbered four to one, with flank exposed and without any artillery support worthy of mention, hurled back, time after time, the flower of the Prussian army, and, in the words of the Commanding General of all the British troops: "saved the situation."
Here, too, as was fitting, we received our baptism of fire (Second Canadian Division), as did also the third when it came over.
For more than a year this salient was the home of the Canadian soldier and Langemarck, St. Julien, Hill 60, St. Eloi, Hooge, and a host of other names in this sector, have been emblazoned, in letters of fire, on his escutcheon.
Baffled in his attempts to capture the city of Ypres, the Hun began systematically to destroy it, turning his heaviest guns on the two most prominent structures: The Halles (Cloth Hall), and St. Martin's Cathedral, two of the grandest architectural monuments in Europe. Now there was no military significance in this; it was simply an exhibition of unbridled rage and savagery. With Rheims Cathedral, and hundreds of lesser churches and chateaux, these ruins will be perpetual monuments to the wanton ruthlessness of German kultur.
When we first went there the towers of both these structures were still standing and formed landmarks that could be seen for miles. Gradually, under the continued bombardment, they melted away until, when I last passed through the martyred city, nothing but small bits of shattered wall could be seen, rising but a few feet above the surrounding piles of broken stones.
Glorious Ypres! Probably never again will you become the city of more than two hundred thousand, whose "Red-coated Burghers" won the day at Courtrai, against the trained army of the Count d'Artois; possibly never again achieve the commercial prominence enjoyed but four short years since; but your name will be forever remembered in the hearts of men from all the far ends of the earth where liberty and justice prevail. H. W. McB.

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